Doctor, Your Patient Is Waiting. It’s a Red Panda.

Article headline: "...learning about diseases and treatments between animals and humans." Doesn't encourage confidence in the rest of the article's content. Try instead "...learning about diseases and treatments between humans and other animals." Is it possible that Weintraub and/or your editors are unaware that we are animals? (Particularly when we get a few drinks into us.)

It's lovely to see a focus on something that doesn't have to do with the mess humans are making of everything.

These young doctors are self-selecting as the cream of the crop, because it shows they have empathy for living things.

Dr. Doolittle would be so proud.

My experience as a horse breeder/rider/trainer has been a big help in being able to figure out many human medical problems in family leading to positive outcomes. In our case, a mammal is a mammal.

It's cute, and makes for a good reading...but given the shortage of primary care physicians, rotations would be better spent in primary care in areas of the U.S. that need more primary care doctors. Besides providing needed medical services, it might encourage some doctors to go into the (less lucrative) field of primary care.

i can't find the Red Panda? is this a test?

Everybody has an idea about what makes a good doctor. The problem is that no one has yet figured out a way to measure it. So, all of these great ideas about how to train doctors better have no proof of achieving the desired outcome. And, everyone has a different idea about what needs to be added to the medical school curriculum: poetry, drama classes, veterinary experiences, nutrition, Eastern philosophy, herbalism, the list goes on and on. Then, healthcare economists think the best way to develop more doctors is to shorten the duration of medical school, which means less education in the science that supports clinical medicine as well as less exposure to patients, less practice caring for patients in real clinical situations. I for one do not want a doctor who will be full of empathy and devoid of actual clinical knowledge and skill.

In medical school, I spent a month's elective working with a wildlife vet and another month training to become a wilderness EMT. Both experiences have served me well as a pediatrician in ways I never could have predicted.

A wonderful program. Too bad it is an elective. All doctors would benefit from developing an appreciation of different species as I am certain treatments for non-human animals could be applied to humans. Not to mention empathy, something sorely lacking in too many medical doctors. Maybe working with non-humans allows them to really feel for these patients - ones who seem so different, yet suffer equally - and help them better relate to their human patients.

Interesting article. My dog had cancer and required surgery. Afterwards, she was given tramadol for pain, while I was taking tramadol for pain. Since the 4th of July is coming up, and the dog is petrified of fireworks, the vet said maybe alprazolam (xanax) would help. Finally, we discussed chemo for my dog. I remain so impressed with what vets can do now and I do believe med students would benefit from this cross training. I also agree with farm experience for med students and think perhaps both professions should consider some type of cross-transfer program.

I am a veterinarian who went on to do a PhD on wildlife diseases and ecology. I did several zoo vet externships while I was in vet school. These were invaluable experiences for someone like me who wanted to go into either zoo or wildlife/population medicine. While I also constantly try to champion vets and MDs communicating with each other (ecologists are always left out of this loop, annoyingly), sending a couple of medical students to a zoo is not going to help with this in the larger picture. On the contrary - these med students take away valuable zoo externship spots from vet students who really do need them if they are to specialize in certain kinds of vet med. MD students (and all of us) would be better served if they went in larger numbers to do rotations with ambulatory vets who do work on farms (as another vet commenter suggested). They would learn much more about population medicine, our food supply, the origins of many zoonotic diseases, and even poverty and public health of the farmers and small towns they work with. One spot taken away from a vet student makes a huge negative impact on that vet student, but has only a very small positive impact on the medical profession; rather than giving a tiny number of MDs some cool zoo stories to tell, let's help them learn real skills and information about the bigger picture by sending groups of them on farm rotations.

While it does seem a bit absurd to devote that much time of medical school to veterinary medicine and procedures, I do think it offers valuable learning experiences for our future doctors. If a doctor is only trained for standard human procedures, there is not much depth in the doctor’s ability. If younger doctors are trained to operate and treat animals, they will learn valuable improvisation skills and will understand how to do a procedure no matter the anatomy of the patient. Working with animals also gives young doctors the opportunity to learn about medications, their interactions, and how they work; not just what they do. Furthermore, it is helpful for doctors in training to be able to work with non-verbal patients, such as infants or disabled individuals. Understanding non-verbal signs, and paying close attention to symptoms with animals has to be used to evaluate the treatment. The main difference between older doctors and residents is the amount of experience in practice. Medicine is always evolving and recent medical students are learning about new advances in medical technology that older practicing doctors aren’t really learning. With this program, I believe that a new generation of doctors will emerge with knowledge in current medical technology, experience and depth in medical procedures, and patient relationship skills.

Before the Red Panda was seen by the doctor, his staff first had to ask the panda the two all important questions: (1) Are you insured? and (2) If yes, can you pay your deductible? Given the fact we're viewing the patient on the operating table, I can only assume that either the panda is employed with a large American corporation or that he comes from an independently wealthy family.

Devoting an entire clinical rotation to veterinary medicine seems a bit extravagant when you consider that the first two years of medical school are traditionally spent in the classroom learning the basic sciences. As a practicing physician, I believe that medical students' time could have been better spent working with human patients. But of course that would not have generated an article in the NYT.

I love this program. What I don't love is that you've only identified the medical students and one veterinarian in the photo captions. Why not the vet techs and other zoo staffers who figure prominently in the images providing expert care to these animals? Your choice hints at a certain privileging of education and prestige. I realize the magazine is out in the world, but that's what makes web-based journalism unique. Perhaps you could reach out to the staff at Zoo New England and ask them to share the names of the staff members in the photos, equally participating in the care of these animals.

Humans are animals, primates in fact. Nice to see some of these physicians acknowledging that fact.

Does not seem that strange to me. My father, may his soul rest in peace, was a (Dartmouth and Harvard trained) surgeon who studied zoology (many years ago) and would tell me the benefits of it. Of course animals have been used in the research and application of human devices as well -- you miss the facts on that reporting, its not just flies, worms, fish and mice. On another note, I am surprised the article did not answer to the stress (i.e. "tremendous anxiety" et. al.) on the animals-- I expect more from the NYTimes. This played like a puff piece- day at the zoo-a nice report as far as that -- but this needed more depth.

I worked for a short time as a vet tech, and that experience taught me so much more than merely being a pet owner. I agree the programs should be expanded to include farm animals as well as exotics, but more importantly, it teaches these future doctors the essence of life on this planet; we mammals, birds, reptiles, even insects, are all related, sometimes obviously, many times in hidden and unexpected ways. I’ve always believed empathy towards animals is a foundation in people to build empathy for all. And it shows that no matter how far we have evolved from our most basic and primitive roots, we share not only life, but illness and mortality as well.

Interesting article. And cudos to Harvard. But UC San Diego has been offering one month rotations at the San Diego Zoo since the 1960s. I did my zoo rotation in 1982, and had a wonderful experience, and even continued to rotate on rounds, weekly, with the zoo vets for the next 2 years. We learned quite a bit from each other!

This is a wonderful idea but I feel that if medical students are to learn about animals and their care, time could be much better spent on a farm. As a clinical instructor at a college of veterinary medicine specializing in food producing animals, I believe these future physicians would benefit greatly by learning about our modern agricultural system which has such an important impact on the lives of animals and humans alike. Physicians need to know about how food is actually produced, how decisions are made about the use of antibiotics and other medications and especially about the mental and physical toll this difficult and vital profession has on those who choose to produce the food the rest of us depend upon.

I was just watching episodes of The Zoo which airs on the Animal Planet network and in one episode the workers said that it is not uncommon for elephants to have tuberculosis. An elephant can have TB but symptoms may not manifest in the elephant for years. The three elephants (who are around 50 years old) were tested for TB. Elephant TB can be contracted by humans and the workers at the Bronx Zoo have minimal physical contact with the elephants until they are tested. The show demonstrated how an elephant is tested. A plastic bag is wrapped around the elephant's trunk and the elephant is given the command to "Blow" and the bag collects the phlegm and is sent to the lab for testing.

This is a great idea. Hopefully these students will be willing to work with vets through out their careers or have at least gained new understanding of the diseases that affect both humans and animals. I knew cats and dogs could get diabetes, but I know that gorillas got heart disease.